town bell, and row-de-dow gaed the
drums, and all in a minute was confusion and uproar in ilka street. I
was seized with a severe shaking of the knees and a flapping at the
heart, when, through the garret window, I saw the signal posts were in a
bleeze, and that the French had landed. This was in reality to be a
soldier! I never got such a fright since the day I was cleckit. There
was such a noise and hullabaloo in the streets, as if the Day of
Judgment had come to find us all unprepared.

Notwithstanding, we behaved ourselves like true-blue Scotsmen, called
forth to fight the battles of our country, and if the French had come,
as they did not come, they would have found that to their cost, as sure
as my name is Mansie. However, it turned out that it was a false alarm,
and that the thief Buonaparte had not landed at Dunbar, as it was
jealoused; so, after standing under arms for half the night, we were
sent home to our beds.

But next day we were taken out to be taught the art of firing. We went
through our motions bravely--to load, ram down the cartridge, made
ready, present, fire. But so flustered and confused was I that I never
had mind to pull the tricker, though I rammed down a fresh cartridge at
the word of command. At the end of the firing the sergeant of the
company ordered all that had loaded pieces to come to the front, and six
of us stepped out in a little line in face of the regiment. Our pieces
were cocked, and at the word "Fire!" off they went. It was an act of
desperation on my part to draw the tricker, and I had hardly well shut
my blinkers when I got such a thump on the shoulder as knocked me
backwards, head over heels, on the grass. When I came to my senses and
found myself not killed outright, and my gun two or three ells away, I
began to rise up. Then I saw one of the men going forward to lift the
fatal piece, but my care for the safety of others overcame the sense of
my own peril. "Let alane, let alane!" cried I to him, "and take care of
yoursell, for it has to gang off five times yet." I thought in my
innocence that we should hear as many reports as I had crammed
cartridges down her muzzle. This was a sore joke against me for a length
of time; but I tholed it patiently, considering cannily within myself,
that even Johnny Cope himself had not learned the art of war in a single
morning.

_IV.--My First and Last Play_

Maister Glen, a farmer from the howes of the Lammermoor, Hills, a
far-awa